Yesterday was exactly the sort of a day I love best—a spicy,
unexpected, amusing day—crowned with a droll adventure.
I cannot account for it, but it seems to me I take the road each morning
with a livelier mind and keener curiosity. If you were to watch me
narrowly these days you would see I am slowly shedding my years. I suspect
that some one of the clear hill streams from which I have been drinking
(lying prone on my face) was in reality the fountain of eternal youth. I
shall not go back to see.
It seems to me, when I feel like this, that in every least thing upon the
roadside, or upon the hill, lurks the stuff of adventure. What a world it
is! A mile south of here I shall find all that Stanley found in the
jungles of Africa; a mile north I am Peary at the Pole!
You there, brown-clad farmer on the tall seat of your wagon, driving
townward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life—your
life—is not all a gray smudge, as you think it is, but crammed,
packed, loaded with miraculous things. I can show you wonders past belief
in your own soul. I can easily convince you that you are in reality a
poet, a hero, a true lover, a saint.
It is because we are not humble enough in the presence of the divine daily
fact that adventure knocks so rarely at our door. A thousand times I have
had to learn this truth (what lesson so hard to learn as the lesson of
humility!) and I suppose I shall have to learn it a thousand times more.
This very day, straining my eyes to see the distant wonders of the
mountains, I nearly missed a miracle by the roadside.
Soon after leaving the minister and his family—I worked with them in
their garden with great delight most of the forenoon—I came, within
a mile—to the wide white turnpike—the Great Road.
Now, I usually prefer the little roads, the little, unexpected, curving,
leisurely country roads. The sharp hills, the pleasant deep valleys, the
bridges not too well kept, the verdure deep grown along old fences, the
houses opening hospitably at the very roadside, all these things I love.
They come to me with the same sort of charm and flavour, only vastly
magnified, which I find often in the essays of the older writers—those
leisurely old fellows who took time to write, REALLY write. The important
thing to me about a road, as about life—and literature, is not that
it goes anywhere, but that it is livable while it goes. For if I were to
arrive—and who knows that I ever shall arrive?—I think I
should be no happier than I am here.
Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road—the broad, smooth
turnpike—rock-bottomed and rolled by a State—without so much
as a loitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to
laugh over, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance—not so much as
a dreamy valley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly
from some particular place to some other particular place and from time to
time a motor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving
its dust to settle upon quiet travellers like me.
Thus to-day when I came to the turnpike I was at first for making straight
across it and taking to the hills beyond, but at that very moment a
motor-car whirled past me as I stood there and a girl with a merry face
waved her hand at me. I lifted my hat in return—and as I watched
them out of sight I felt a curious new sense of warmth and friendliness
there in the Great Road.
“These are just people, too,” I said aloud—“and maybe they really
like it!”
And with that I began laughing at myself, and at the whole, big, amazing,
interesting world. Here was I pitying them for their benighted state, and
there were they, no doubt, pitying me for mine!
And with that pleasant and satisfactory thought in my mind and a song in
my throat I swung into the Great Road.
“It doesn't matter in the least,” said I to myself, “whether a man takes
hold of life by the great road or the little ones so long as he takes
hold.”
And oh, it was a wonderful day! A day with movement in it; a day that
flowed! In every field the farmers were at work, the cattle fed widely in
the meadows, and the Great Road itself was alive with a hundred varied
sorts of activity. Light winds stirred the tree-tops and rippled in the
new grass; and from the thickets I heard the blackbirds crying. Everything
animate and inanimate, that morning, seemed to have its own clear voice
and to cry out at me for my interest, or curiosity, or sympathy. Under
such circumstances it could not have been long—nor was it long—before
I came plump upon the first of a series of odd adventures.
A great many people, I know, abominate the roadside sign. It seems to them
a desecration of nature, the intrusion of rude commercialism upon the
perfection of natural beauty. But not I. I have no such feeling. Oh, the
signs in themselves are often rude and unbeautiful, and I never wished my
own barn or fences to sing the praises of swamp root or sarsaparilla—and
yet there is something wonderfully human about these painted and pasted
vociferations of the roadside signs; and I don't know why they are less
“natural” in their way than a house or barn or a planted field of corn.
They also tell us about life. How eagerly they cry out at us, “Buy me, buy
me!” What enthusiasm they have in their own concerns, what boundless faith
in themselves! How they speak of the enormous energy, activity,
resourcefulness of human kind!
Indeed, I like all kinds of signs. The autocratic warnings of the road,
the musts and the must-nots of traffic, I observe in passing; and I often
stand long at the crossings and look up at the finger-posts, and consider
my limitless wealth as a traveller. By this road I may, at my own
pleasure, reach the Great City; by that—who knows?—the far
wonders of Cathay. And I respond always to the appeal which the devoted
pilgrim paints on the rocks at the roadside: “Repent ye, for the kingdom
of God is at hand,” and though I am certain that the kingdom of God is
already here, I stop always and repent—just a little—knowing
that there is always room for it. At the entrance of the little towns,
also, or in the squares of the villages, I stop often to read the signs of
taxes assessed, or of political meetings; I see the evidences of homes
broken up in the notices of auction sales, and of families bereaved in the
dry and formal publications of the probate court. I pause, too, before the
signs of amusements flaming red and yellow on the barns (boys, the circus
is coming to town!), and I pause also, but no longer, to read the silent
signs carved in stone in the little cemeteries as I pass. Symbols, you
say? Why, they're the very stuff of life. If you cannot see life here in
the wide road, you will never see it at all.
Well, I saw a sign yesterday at the roadside that I never saw anywhere
before. It was not a large sign—indeed rather inconspicuous—consisting
of a single word rather crudely painted in black (as by an amateur) upon a
white board. It was nailed to a tree where those in swift passing cars
could not avoid seeing it:
[ REST ]
I cannot describe the odd sense of enlivenment, of pleasure I had when I
saw this new sign.
“Rest!” I exclaimed aloud. “Indeed I will,” and I sat down on a stone not
far away.
“Rest!”
What a sign for this very spot! Here in the midst of the haste and hurry
of the Great Road a quiet voice was saying, “Rest.” Some one with
imagination, I thought, evidently put that up; some quietist offering this
mild protest against the breathless progress of the age. How often I have
felt the same way myself—as though I were being swept onward through
life faster than I could well enjoy it. For nature passes the dishes far
more rapidly than we can help ourselves.
Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only some cunning
advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has its price),
thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure which he
will make a mile or so farther on. Or else some humourist wasting his wit
upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me, perhaps) to accept
his ironical advice. But it would be well worth while should I find him,
to see him chuckle behind his hand.
So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing a
rather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who painted
these signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than a
trader or humourist. (Confidentially, I could not make a picture of him in
which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair). As I walked onward
again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, and I enjoyed
thinking what I should say if I met him. A mile farther up the road I saw
another sign exactly like the first.
“Here he is again,” I said exultantly, and that sign being somewhat nearer
the ground I was able to examine it carefully front and back, but it bore
no evidence of its origin.
In the next few miles I saw two other signs with nothing on them but the
word “Rest.”
Now this excellent admonition—like much of the excellent admonitions
in this world—affected me perversely: it made me more restless than
ever. I felt that I could not rest properly until I found out who wanted
me to rest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista for new adventure.
Presently, away ahead of me in the road, I saw a man standing near a
one-horse wagon. He seemed to be engaged in some activity near the
roadside, but I could not tell exactly what. As I hastened nearer I
discovered that he was a short, strongly built, sun-bronzed man in
working-clothes—and with the shortest of short hair. I saw him take
a shovel from the wagon and begin digging. He was the road-worker.
I asked the road-worker if he had seen the curious signs. He looked up at
me with a broad smile (he had good-humoured, very bright blue eyes).
“Yes,” he said, “but they ain't for me.”
“Then you don't follow the advice they give?”
“Not with a section like mine,” said he, and he straightened up and looked
first one way of the road and then the other. “I have from Grabow Brook,
but not the bridge, to the top o' Sullivan Hill, and all the culverts
between, though two of 'em are by rights bridges. And I claim that's a job
for any full-grown man.”
He began shovelling again in the road as if to prove how busy he was.
There had been a small landslide from an open cut on one side and a mass
of gravel and small boulders lay scattered on the smooth macadam. I
watched him for a moment. I love to watch the motions of vigorous men at
work, the easy play of the muscles, the swing of the shoulders, the vigour
of stoutly planted legs. He evidently considered the conversation closed,
and I, as—well, as a dusty man of the road—easily dismissed.
(You have no idea, until you try it, what a weight of prejudice the man of
the road has to surmount before he is accepted on easy terms by the
ordinary members of the human race.)
A few other well-intentioned observations on my part having elicited
nothing but monosyllabic replies, I put my bag down by the roadside and,
going up to the wagon, got out a shovel, and without a word took my place
at the other end of the landslide and began to shovel for all I was worth.
I said not a word to the husky road-worker and pretended not to look at
him, but I saw him well enough out of the corner of my eye. He was
evidently astonished and interested, as I knew he would be: it was
something entirely new on the road. He didn't quite know whether to be
angry, or amused, or sociable. I caught him looking over at me several
times, but I offered no response; then he cleared his throat and said:
“Where you from?”
I answered with a monosyllable which I knew he could not quite catch.
Silence again for some time, during which I shovelled valiantly and with
great inward amusement. Oh, there is nothing like cracking a hard human
nut! I decided at that moment, to have him invite me to supper.
Finally, when I showed no signs of stopping my work, he himself paused and
leaned on his shovel. I kept right on.
“Say, partner,” said he, finally, “did YOU read those signs as you come up
the road?”
“Yes,” I said, “but they weren't for me, either. My section's a long one,
too.”
“Say, you ain't a road-worker, are you?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes,” said I, with a sudden inspiration, “that's exactly what I am—a
road-worker.”
“Put her there, then, partner,” he said, with a broad smile on his bronzed
face.
He and I struck hands, rested on our shovels (like old hands at it), and
looked with understanding into each other's eyes. We both knew the trade
and the tricks of the trade; all bars were down between us. The fact is,
we had both seen and profited by the peculiar signs at the roadside.
“Where's your section?” he asked easily.
“Well,” I responded after considering the question, “I have a very long
and hard section. It begins at a place called Prosy Common—do you
know it?—and reaches to the top of Clear Hill. There are several bad
spots on the way, I can tell you.”
“Don't know it,” said the husky road-worker; “'tain't round here, is it?
In the town of Sheldon, maybe?”
Just at this moment, perhaps fortunately, for there is nothing so
difficult to satisfy as the appetite of people for specific information, a
motor-car whizzed past, the driver holding up his hand in greeting, and
the road-worker and I responding in accordance with the etiquette of the
Great Road.
“There he goes in the ruts again,” said the husky road-worker. “Why is it,
I'd like to know, that every one wants to run in the same identical track
when they've got the whole wide road before 'em?”
“That's what has long puzzled me, too,” I said. “Why WILL people continue
to run in ruts?”
“It don't seem to do no good to put up signs,” said the road-worker.
“Very little indeed,” said I. “The fact is, people have got to be bumped
out of the ruts they get into.”
“You're right,” said he enthusiastically, and his voice dropped into the
tone of one speaking to a member of the inner guild. “I know how to get
'em.”
“How?” I asked in an equally mysterious voice.
“I put a stone or two in the ruts!”
“Do you?” I exclaimed. “I've done that very thing myself—many a
time! Just place a good hard tru—I mean stone, with a bit of common
dust sprinkled over it, in the middle of the rut, and they'll look out for
THAT rut for some time to come.”
“Ain't it gorgeous,” said the husky road-worker, chuckling joyfully, “to
see 'em bump?”
“It is,” said I—“gorgeous.”
After that, shovelling part of the time in a leisurely way, and part of
the time responding to the urgent request of the signs by the roadside (it
pays to advertise!), the husky road-worker and I discussed many great and
important subjects, all, however, curiously related to roads. Working all
day long with his old horse, removing obstructions, draining out the
culverts, filling ruts and holes with new stone, and repairing the damage
of rain and storm, the road-worker was filled with a world of practical
information covering roads and road-making. And having learned that I was
of the same calling, we exchanged views with the greatest enthusiasm. It
was astonishing to see how nearly in agreement we were as to what
constituted an ideal road.
“Almost everything,” said he, “depends on depth. If you get a good solid
foundation, the' ain't anything that can break up your road.”
“Exactly what I have discovered,” I responded. “Get down to bedrock and do
an honest job of building.”
“And don't have too many sharp turns.”
“No,” said I, “long, leisurely curves are best—all through life. You
have observed that nearly all the accidents on the road are due to sharp
turnings.”
“Right you are!” he exclaimed.
“A man who tries to turn too sharply on his way nearly always skids.”
“Or else turns turtle in the ditch.”
But it was not until we reached the subject of oiling that we mounted to
the real summit of enthusiastic agreement. Of all things on the road, or
above the road, or in the waters under the road, there is nothing that the
road-worker dislikes more than oil.
“It's all right,” said he, “to use oil for surfacin' and to keep down the
dust. You don't need much and it ain't messy. But sometimes when you see
oil pumped on a road, you know that either the contractor has been
jobbin', or else the road's worn out and ought to be rebuilt.”
“That's exactly what I've found,” said I. “Let a road become almost
impassable with ruts and rocks and dust, and immediately some man says,
'Oh, it's all right—put on a little oil—'”
“That's what our supervisor is always sayin',” said the road-worker.
“Yes,” I responded, “it usually is the supervisor. He lives by it. He
wants to smooth over the defects, he wants to lay the dust that every
passerby kicks up, he tries to smear over the truth regarding conditions
with messy and ill-smelling oil. Above everything, he doesn't want the
road dug up and rebuilt—says it will interfere with traffic, injure
business, and even set people to talking about changing the route
entirely! Oh, haven't I seen it in religion, where they are doing their
best to oil up roads that are entirely worn out—and as for politics,
is not the cry of the party-roadster and the harmony-oilers abroad in the
land?”
In the excited interest with which this idea now bore me along I had
entirely forgotten the existence of my companion, and as I now glanced at
him I saw him standing with a curious look of astonishment and suspicion
on his face. I saw that I had unintentionally gone a little too far. So I
said abruptly:
“Partner, let's get a drink. I'm thirsty.”
He followed me, I thought a bit reluctantly, to a little brook not far up
the road where we had been once before. As we were drinking, silently, I
looked at the stout young fellow standing there, and I thought to myself:
What a good, straightforward young fellow he is anyway, and how thoroughly
he knows his job. I thought how well he was equipped with unilluminated
knowledge, and it came to me whimsically, that here was a fine bit of
road-mending for me to do.
Most people have sight, but few have insight; and as I looked into the
clear blue eyes of my friend I had a sudden swift inspiration, and before
I could repent of it I had said to him in the most serious voice that I
could command:
“Friend, I am in reality a spectacle-peddler—”
His glance shifted uncomfortably to my gray bag.
“And I want to sell you a pair of spectacles,” I said. “I see that you are
nearly blind.”
“Me blind!”
It would be utterly impossible to describe the expression on his face. His
hand went involuntarily to his eyes, and he glanced quickly, somewhat
fearfully, about.
“Yes, nearly blind,” said I. “I saw it when I first met you. You don't
know it yourself yet, but I can assure you it is a bad case.”
I paused, and shook my head slowly. If I had not been so much in earnest,
I think I should have been tempted to laugh outright. I had begun my talk
with him half jestingly, with the amusing idea of breaking through his
shell, but I now found myself tremendously engrossed, and desired nothing
in the world (at that moment) so much as to make him see what I saw. I
felt as though I held a live human soul in my hand.
“Say, partner,” said the road-worker, “are you sure you aren't—” He
tapped his forehead and began to edge away.
I did not answer his question at all, but continued, with my eyes fixed on
him:
“It is a peculiar sort of blindness. Apparently, as you look about, you
see everything there is to see, but as a matter of fact you see nothing in
the world but this road—”
“It's time that I was seein' it again then,” said he, making as if to turn
back to work, but remaining with a disturbed expression on his
countenance.
“The Spectacles I have to sell,” said I, “are powerful magnifiers”—he
glanced again at the gray bag. “When you put them on you will see a
thousand wonderful things besides the road—”
“Then you ain't road-worker after all!” he said, evidently trying to be
bluff and outright with me.
Now your substantial, sober, practical American will stand only about so
much verbal foolery; and there is nothing in the world that makes him more
uncomfortable—yes, downright mad!—than to feel that he is
being played with. I could see that I had nearly reached the limit with
him, and that if I held him now it must be by driving the truth straight
home. So I stepped over toward him and said very earnestly:
“My friend, don't think I am merely joking you. I was never more in
earnest in all my life. When I told you I was a road-worker I meant it,
but I had in mind the mending of other kinds of roads than this.”
I laid my hand on his arm, and explained to him as directly and simply as
English words could do it, how, when he had spoken of oil for his roads, I
thought of another sort of oil for another sort of roads, and when he
spoke of curves in his roads I was thinking of curves in the roads I dealt
with, and I explained to him what my roads were. I have never seen a man
more intensely interested: he neither moved nor took his eyes from my
face.
“And when I spoke of selling you a pair of spectacles,” said I, “it was
only a way of telling you how much I wanted to make you see my kinds of
roads as well as your own.”
I paused, wondering if, after all, he could be made to see. I know now how
the surgeon must feel at the crucial moment of his accomplished operation.
Will the patient live or die?
The road-worker drew a long breath as he came out from under the
anesthetic.
“I guess, partner,” said he, “you're trying to put a stone or two in my
ruts!”
I had him!
“Exactly,” I exclaimed eagerly.
We both paused. He was the first to speak—with some embarrassment:
“Say, you're just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He was
always sayin' things that meant something else and when you found out what
he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in your insides.”
I laughed.
“It's a mighty good sign,” I said, “when a man begins to feel queer in the
insides. It shows that something is happening to him.”
With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and friendly—and
shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a time, when we had nearly
cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky road-worker chuckling to
himself; finally, straightening up, he said:
“Say, there's more things in a road than ever I dreamt of.”
“I see,” said I, “that the new spectacles are a good fit.”
The road-worker laughed long and loud.
“You're a good one, all right,” he said. “I see what YOU mean. I catch
your point.”
“And now that you've got them on,” said I, “and they are serving you so
well, I'm not going to sell them to you at all. I'm going to present them
to you—for I haven't seen anybody in a long time that I've enjoyed
meeting more than I have you.”
We nurse a fiction that people love to cover up their feelings; but I have
learned that if the feeling is real and deep they love far better to find
a way to uncover it.
“Same here,” said the road-worker simply, but with a world of genuine
feeling in his voice.
Well, when it came time to stop work the road-worker insisted that I get
in and go home with him.
“I want you to see my wife and kids,” said he.
The upshot of it was that I not only remained for supper—and a good
supper it was—but I spent the night in his little home, close at the
side of the road near the foot of a fine hill. And from time to time all
night long, it seemed to me, I could hear the rush of cars going by in the
smooth road outside, and sometimes their lights flashed in at my window,
and sometimes I heard them sound their brassy horns.
I wish I could tell more of what I saw there, of the garden back of the
house, and of all the road-worker and his wife told me of their simple
history—but, the road calls!
When I set forth early this morning the road-worker followed me out to the
smooth macadam (his wife standing in the doorway with her hands rolled in
her apron) and said to me, a bit shyly:
“I'll be more sort o'—sort o' interested in roads since I've seen
you.”
“I'll be along again some of these days,” said I, laughing, “and I'll stop
in and show you my new stock of spectacles. Maybe I can sell you another
pair!”
“Maybe you kin,” and he smiled a broad, understanding smile.
Nothing brings men together like having a joke in common.
So I walked off down the road—in the best of spirits—ready for
the events of another day.
It will surely be a great adventure, one of these days, to come this way
again—and to visit the Stanleys, and the Vedders, and the Minister,
and drop in and sell another pair of specs to the Road-worker. It seems to
me I have a wonderfully rosy future ahead of me!
P. S.—I have not yet found out who painted the curious signs; but I
am not as uneasy about it as I was. I have seen two more of them already
this morning—and find they exert quite a psychological influence.
